I added Japanese characters to my WindowsXP computer today and also unintentionally, according to the newly visible Language Bar, Faeroese. I’ve now noticed that in any computer address (terminology?) that the “/” has been replaced with a Japanese character that looks like a “Y” with an “=” on top of it. (Even though I added Japanese I don’t read it or know how to type it, obviously.) The “/” remains as parts of URLs in my browser.
So far this hasn’t affected any functionality. I wonder if it may cause issues in the future and wonder if anyone knows how to fix this short of uninstalling Japanese characters.
Evidently you changed the default language when you added Japanese language support. You should be able to change it back without removing Japanese language support. Just go to Control Panel -> Regional and Language Options, and under the Advanced tab, there should be an option for “Language for non-Unicode programs.” Change this back to English.
So, I have to ask why the heck you added it if you don’t read or write Japanese? No criticism, just curious.
My wife is Japanese, so I added it to my desktop and and laptop. Down at the bottom on the system bar, there is now an little blue icon with EN in it. If I click on that, a menu opens that lets me choose Japanese. It then changes to JP. If I click on it again, there is a choice to open the language bar. On that are some choices, but if you click on Input Mode, you get a choice of Hiragana or Katakana. Then if you type in English, it automatically changes to the Japanese characters.
In some instances, it is not the correct character, but if you hit the space bar, a menu opens with other choices, and the right one can be picked.To get back to English, just click on the icon again and pick English. Then to get rid of the language bar, click on the top little arrow thingie on the right side, and it minimizes it back to the sys tray.
You may know all this, but just in case, that is the way it works, at least for us. If you want to try it out, just type in “sushi” or “arigato” and you will see the Japanese characters appear like magic.
And this is why I have a Mac. I can switch to hiragana or katakana or romaji with a single keystroke as I’m typing, so no clicking or touching the mouse, and it auto-converts hiragana to kanji on the fly.
I tried using the Japanese language on a Windows machine. It was so tedious I gave up after a few minutes. Why are there so many steps?
I don’t think it’s that tedious at all. Other than the switching mode (click versus keybind), it’s exactly the same (autoconverts on the fly). And I’m pretty sure you *can *set a keybind for switching between (or among) languages.
A reasonable question. I download a lot of Japanese music and burn it to CDs, Vocaloid stuff to be specific. The letters that make up the song titles always showed up as either little boxes or question marks in the folder and in other applications, like Freehand where I make my CD insert cards. Having the Japanese text, I can put it in a translator and get an approximate song title, although, come to think of it, maybe I could have done that before with the little boxes.
It’s the same on Windows. Alt-Shift converts between language modes. Within Japanese mode, you can use Alt-` to switch between hiragana, katakana and romaji modes. Of course in Japanese input mode you get inline auto-conversion.
What steps?
If you’re talking about steps necessary to enable Japanese input - on Vista/7, all you have to do is go to Control Panel -> Region and Language -> Keyboard and Languages, and click on “Change Keyboards”, then click Add and choose Japanese. After that’s done, you switch between English and Japanese with one keystroke, as I explained above.
In XP, I think there was one additional step required - under Region and Language there was a checkbox for “enable support for Asian languages” or something like that. But that’s the only difference.
It may have been more difficult on Win98 and older, is that where you tried it before?
Unfortunately, for that you might need to switch the system to Japanese again. It depends on how those Japanese characters are encoded. If it’s Unicode, no problem. If it’s not unicode, well, that’s exactly what the “Language for non-Unicode programs” setting is for - whether to display non-unicode characters as Japanese or English (or something else).
Are you talking about copying the filename, or header info in an MP3 file? For copying a filename, just hit F2 (or right-click and choose “rename”), then you can copy the name. For an MP3 file tag, you can probably do the same within whatever software you use to organize MP3 files.
randwill, you shouldn’t need to have the IME/keyboard enabled to be able to display the Japanese language text properly. I can’t figure out how to do it from here (work computer), but you should be able to enable the font support while turning off the language bar.
Okay, that works. Thanks for the tip. As an honorary Faeroe Islander, I didn’t mean to bring shame to my brethren by not knowing that.
Testing it out - “14.誰も得しない伯方さんソング” in Bing Translator yields, “14. Nobody 得しない Hakata’s song”. So, not perfect, but something.
My favorite translator for Japanese is the text glossing feature of WWWJDIC, but I don’t know how useful it would be if you don’t speak/read Japanese at least a bit already to help you with verb forms and figuring out how the bits all fit together. I’d hackjob-translate that title as “Hakata-san’s Song for No One,” or possibly “Unobtainable Hakata-san’s Song,” depending on whether or not *Hakata-san Songu *are supposed to be parsed together or not. (Also, I’d recommend Google Translate over Bing, especially if it can’t even handle an obvious verb like 得しない.)
You may be right, SFG. It’s been a long time since I used Japanese on a PC. In fact, it’s been a long time since I’ve used a PC. Anyway, how **KlondikeGeoff **described it is kind of how I remember it. All the clicking and selecting and switching kana, etc… I hated it.
Honestly most of that futzing is stuff you never need to do. I always just switch it to hirigana, and then it autocompletes whatever it should be. Can’t remember if I need to specifically set it to katakana for words that use it, or if it figures it out on its own the same way it does for kanji.
It was supposed to be “25% more correct, 200% more hostile,” but that wouldn’t fit.
